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Let's take your analogy and fix it a bit. There's a guy living on one side of the lake in an area where electricity is cheap. He decides to setup a bitcoin mi

by z9znz 4y ago

Let's take your analogy and fix it a bit. There's a guy living on one side of the lake in an area where electricity is cheap. He decides to setup a bitcoin miner in his home. Once he starts making money, he realizes his profit is quite good; so he scales up, and scales up, and scales up. Eventually he's drawing so much electricity that it's affecting the whole region; and he's cooling his mining rigs with circulated lake water, eventually affecting the local wildlife in the water and around it. Is that ok? After all, 1 rig was fine. What's wrong with 1000 rigs? What's wrong is that there was always an environmental or public cost that was not borne by the person making the profit. When it was a small cost, it wasn't a problem. But now it's a huge cost.

ALittleLight 4y ago
What I wrote was not an analogy but an example meant literally. It's specious to say that "we all follow a regulation" as some kind of argument by solidarity if the regulation is burdensome to some people and not to others.
- z9znz 4y ago
  The LACK of regulation is burdensome to everyone. The farmers have increased profits at the expense of everyone else. If a person ran a small mail order business out of their house, and once a day a delivery vehicle came to drop off and pick up items, it wouldn't be much of an issue for the neighbors. Perhaps there wouldn't be any zoning regulations (because heretofore it was not necessary). But if the house is now full of workers, and there are a dozen semi trucks stopped in front of the house every day, the neighbors are going to be unhappy. Probably the local government will institute some zoning laws which prohibit that scale of operation in a residential area. Obviously that new regulation is burdensome to the person who was running a fine, profitable operation out of a residential home. Naturally they will fight to prevent such regulation. What we have here is a town where every block has such an operation. So the town has a lot of good production and export, and there's great financial incentive to continue. But not only are the locals who are not in that business impacted negatively by the businesses, but now even the neighboring towns are complaining about the torn up country roads (too many heavy trucks), the congested intersections, and so on. The businesses say the problem is not them, but lack of good infrastructure. Build more big roads and this won't be a problem. Why take away our successful businesses that we built with our own hands? Let us buy our neighbors houses (to expand our business), and those people can move away where they won't be bothered by us. Make no mistake - if it were possible, the farmers would buy up every piece of land in this small country and push all the other people out. Why stop with what you have when you could scale up and earn more?

by z9znz 4y ago

ALittleLight 4y ago

What I wrote was not an analogy but an example meant literally. It's specious to say that "we all follow a regulation" as some kind of argument by solidarity if the regulation is burdensome to some people and not to others.

z9znz 4y ago
The LACK of regulation is burdensome to everyone. The farmers have increased profits at the expense of everyone else. If a person ran a small mail order business out of their house, and once a day a delivery vehicle came to drop off and pick up items, it wouldn't be much of an issue for the neighbors. Perhaps there wouldn't be any zoning regulations (because heretofore it was not necessary). But if the house is now full of workers, and there are a dozen semi trucks stopped in front of the house every day, the neighbors are going to be unhappy. Probably the local government will institute some zoning laws which prohibit that scale of operation in a residential area. Obviously that new regulation is burdensome to the person who was running a fine, profitable operation out of a residential home. Naturally they will fight to prevent such regulation. What we have here is a town where every block has such an operation. So the town has a lot of good production and export, and there's great financial incentive to continue. But not only are the locals who are not in that business impacted negatively by the businesses, but now even the neighboring towns are complaining about the torn up country roads (too many heavy trucks), the congested intersections, and so on. The businesses say the problem is not them, but lack of good infrastructure. Build more big roads and this won't be a problem. Why take away our successful businesses that we built with our own hands? Let us buy our neighbors houses (to expand our business), and those people can move away where they won't be bothered by us. Make no mistake - if it were possible, the farmers would buy up every piece of land in this small country and push all the other people out. Why stop with what you have when you could scale up and earn more?